


Smoke and Mirrors

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Disability, Gen, Head Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of Sherlock still believes that Moriarty is in there somewhere, and all of this is just smoke and mirrors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Mirrors

Moriarty - no, that's not who he is any more - _Jim_ looks strangely thin like this. There are angles to him that weren't there before. His neck looks longer, collarbones oddly stark where they're just visible, one more than the other. He looks younger than he is too, in the clothes they've put him in, hair in odd little spikes where it hasn't grown back quite right.

He's perfectly still where they've sat him, and he has no choice about that now. He has no choice in where to go, and when, though it's debatable if he knows, or cares. But there's a frustration to him now, something impatient and hard-edged that occasionally threatens to wash into anger. Something that John can't help but imagine is a half-confused grasp at what he had been. As if some tiny part of him remembers the crystalline clarity the world used to be. Even if all the connections are gone, broken.

John sits across from him, more often than anyone else. Though there's never been anything like recognition. There's never been any indication that Jim remembers anything at all. John helps Jim decide on a sheet of paper one-handed. Finds him a collection of large, wax crayons. Large enough that they don't need too much coordination. Though 'not too much' is still a challenge, still something Jim needs to be helped with. Even if he objects to how far across the table they currently are. John finds the purple one, it's usually the purple one, purple or navy, or black, depending on the mood he's in.

There's a sound that wants to be a word, it snaps and then carries on, in a low murmur, dragged across his teeth where they can't quite unclench far enough to let his voice free. Jim stops the flow of noise with some difficulty. Then he exhales, rough, messy impatience when he can't quite make the fingers of his left hand grip the slippery length of the crayon that John holds in front of him. They're pressed into the table, stiff and awkward, leaving patches of condensation on the shiny surface. The fingers curl in, tighten, paper rucked up underneath them, and John already recognises the desperate huff of air for what it is. He reaches over and opens Jim's fingers. They're long and delicate, but cold, like Sherlock's - always ice cold. They don't tug away. But they twitch and pull at his own fingertips, almost mindlessly. It's like they're not quite connected right any more, and have no idea how to do any of the million things they used to.

John helps him curl his fingers round the crayon. It takes three goes to make it tight, to convince them to hold on. Before Jim can press the edge of it down against the paper, leaving wild swirls of purple that are almost vindictive in their hecticness. Too hard, but purposeful all the same, purposeful in some way that perhaps only he understands now. Purple seems like the sort of colour Moriarty would approve of. John isn't sure if that's reassuring or not.

Sherlock's glaring at him from his position by the wall, a furious, suspicious glare. He hates it here, but he's the one that always insists they come when John wavers, uncertainly. When he's too tired, too angry, too guilty - for no reasons he could quite name. Sherlock will stand hunched and sharp by the wall, as if he's trying to contain himself, restrain himself, from something. Though it'll show in the clench of his teeth and the way his eyes refuse to settle on anything for long. The way they'll always slide back to Moriarty - to _Jim_.

John knows there's part of Sherlock that believes Moriarty's faking. Even now, even though he spent months on the neurosurgical ward, and even longer in rehabilitation. Part of Sherlock still believes that Moriarty is in there somewhere and all of this is just smoke and mirrors. Or maybe it's more complicated than that. Maybe Sherlock wants to believe Moriarty is still in there because the alternative is unthinkable.

John's never even entertained the possibility. He's read the notes, he's seen the X-Rays, Moriarty's skull cracked into almost too many pieces to count, John still has no idea how they managed to get him breathing again at all. He should have died. Jim's incredibly lucky he can manage this amount of motor control. He's lucky he can even breathe on his own. Lestrade called it 'the furious tenacity of a psychopath determined to survive, no matter the cost.' John isn't sure Moriarty would have considered this an acceptable alternative to death. Or maybe in his own twisted way he'd find this a fitting punishment for Sherlock. They'll never know.

Sherlock's hovering now, coat brushing John's hair when he leans forward far enough to scowl at Jim's paper full of smudged fingerprints and purple spirals, like it holds a thousand cryptic secrets. Jim barely reacts to Sherlock's presence at all. John thinks Sherlock hates that most of all. There had been so much between them, such a fury of intelligence and challenge and respect, that was just as brutal and dangerous as any other sort of warfare.

Jim lets go of the crayon he's holding, with difficulty, and it's bent and cracked where it rolls on the silver tabletop, back and forth where the metal bends. John can feel Sherlock contemplating Jim's drawing as he searches for another crayon among the pile John is keeping from rolling off the table.

"Sherlock, leave it," he says, because John knows that if Sherlock tries to take the paper things will become difficult.

There's a stillness, but Sherlock doesn't move back.

"Leave it," John says again, firmer this time.

"Why must you be so frustratingly careful with him?" Sherlock asks, it's casual, it's barely even meant, but John feels stretched taut and he can't hold his tongue today. He can't just _ignore_ him.

"Because it could just as easily have been you," John says tightly.

He shoves his chair back, pushes past Sherlock, out into the offensive whiteness of the corridor and its harsh, humming, artificial lights. He breathes in the familiar sterile flatness of the air. He wants to think about anything but the Hotel Reichenbach, thirty stories high. Where only one of them had gone over the balcony. Sherlock's first coat - his stupid, overly dramatic bloody coat - had saved him. Ripped straight up the back, but strong enough to hold him until John could pull him back over the edge.

Moriarty had hit the ground.

Sherlock's coat appears next to him, heavy and dark against the stark white wall.

"It could have been you," John says quietly.

Sherlock doesn't say anything at all.

  



End file.
